Mass Effect Runner
by Zer0fool
Summary: I was amazed at the lack of true OC stories for Mass Effect, so I did a thing. Where to start, I don't think I'm even a hero, as this tale taught me that you usually are the opposite of what you convince yourself you are. No, to society I was an annoyance, a criminal, an easy out, a delivery man. Well, I'm technically all of those things, I am in fact… a Runner.


_**So guys, I did a thing, after beating the Mass Effect series for the thousandth time. So, Mass Effect is owned by Bioware, not me, only thing that is mine are my characters. Hope you all enjoy!**_

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><p>Where to start… man, this is a long tale to tell you guys. I mean it takes place over a three year period. Well I guess I could start with what I am, so most people you hear about in this kind of position is usually a soldier or hero, but I'm not too good at taking orders, I don't think I'm even a hero, as this tale taught me that you usually are the opposite of what you convince yourself you are. No, to society I was an annoyance, a criminal, an easy out, a delivery man. Well, I'm technically all of those things, I am in fact… a Runner.<p>

"Stop him!" I heard the someone yell from behind me, I knew this wasn't going to be fun at all. My hood kept the mask covering my face from the view of those I ran past. I had my gray hoodie with a blue wing logo on the back. The armor gauntlet that covered my right arm had the orange holo display appeared over it. My left arm had a regal looking shoulder piece on it. My green cargo pants were covered by my leg greaves. My mask, they almost looked like the mask given to Furys. Coming from under the left sleeve of my coat was my left hand covered in a multilayered material used to keep armor air tight in space. It was common here, though the sight of a masked person running from a gang wasn't.

I had seriously pissed these guys off. I mean all I did was steal a crap load of credits from under them, I mean the only reason they knew it was me was I accidently ran into another person on my way out of the bar. Thank god no one was taking what the lead guy said seriously as I ran. I reached the markets, I was hoping to lose them on the stairs. I burst up them so fast I almost hit a blonde guy at the top of the stairs. "Sorry!"

I waited till the guys chasing me saw me at the top of the stairs, just as the were at the top, I jumped the railing back down and bolted out. I needed to hide from these guys. That's when I remembered where I was, I found the railing and looked behind me as civilians and the guys after me looked at me, the guys charged me, one went to pull out his pistol. I quickly threw myself over the railing as a few bullets whizzed past me, just barely missing me as I fell. Thank god for the gravity that the Citadel made. Than I remembered something… I just jumped… I hate gravity…

As I fell, I tried for a way to look for a way out of this situation as that was a thing I was good at, I have to be in my line of work. I did have to look for long as I saw my way out, it was going to hurt, but below me, there was a deep fish tank. I angled myself to hit it feet first and when I did I sank almost straight to the bottom, I could feel all of the water above me, it was way too deep in here for me to stay for long, plus deep fish tanks usually have sharks in them… never fun. I forced myself to the top, and thanked all the gods and goddesses of every race for no sharks. I just stayed there for a moment and watched everyone staring at me. "Good evening everyone."

I crawled out of the tank and walked away slowly. Trying to fit in a crowd was hard when you were the only one soaking wet. This was going to be a weird start of some random story one day.

"You're joking right?" The male Quarian next to me shook his head at me. "Bug, this is the fourth time you've done something like this, it's almost like you wanna get killed!"

"Hey it's not my fault, I had no where else to go," Being back into normal clothes felt weird, now I had an old style from Earth on, I had a grey button down shirt with short sleeves and a grey flatcap with blue jeans on. I grabbed a book from the pile that I had in my hand and put it on the empty space in the self. "And if someone had told me the package had a tracker in it, I wouldn't have this problem in the first place, right Reh?"

"Oh, don't give me that." He placed a book in a pile he held on the opposite self. His suite had a dark green tint to it with a few pins on his chest, and that was the only thing that separated him from another Quarian in their suites physically. "You know to expect things like that!"

"Hey you two!" An Asari came from around the corner and stared at us with an evil glare. She had on a red hoodie with a smiely face with sharp teeth on it and black baggy jeans on. though she limped when she walked, giving away the fact that she had a prosthetic leg, well that and she had to wear a brace outside her clothes to help her bend the metal leg. "Enough complaining, Rez, next time don't steal credit chits that are going to be used for a drug deal. I know you want to help, but that's just stupid. Reh, you should have looked into their operations, we could have passed a few deal locations onto C-Sec."

"Yes ma'am." Reh' Ran was the Quarian's full name. And the Asari was my old friend Shiva. The place that we were cerently at was a book store on Zakera ward, it was a well hidden store, you usually had to get someone who knew where it was to find it in the first place. Though, we get plenty of money from my other job besides running the store. Running, and for those of you completely confused by the aspect of Running being a job. I'm a package runner, I run data and objects from one place to another quickly and quietly. I'm one of the best on Citadel. I would used to be at least the second best, until Shiva lost her leg. The only problem with Running, is that it isn't exactly completely legal, so you can get in a lot of trouble for doing it. Though, this is because Runners are usually used as Smugglers or Slave Runners, so I made an alter ego to Run, while the me in the public runs a little book shop.

Yet, today was not going to be my lucky day… or it was, I guess that depends on how you look at the outcome, and the person who caused it. "So, are you going to the drop off soon Bug?"

"I don't think I can," I sighed heavily putting the last book I had onto the shelf. I moved around the shelf as the rest of the store came into view, there was a comic section in the back corner, that was a small display, then along the adjacent wall where kid books, then you hit the front window which had holodisplays of book covers on it, the wall behind me and back looked like a library. "They will be looking for me, I probably can't take any jobs until we get everything figured out, plus I think they may be tracking the money…"

"Well at least the store has a 'deadzone.'" Reh did air quotes to get his point across, he was my tech support, he even made it so any tracking singes that come through the front door stop working until you left again. That in itself could get us in trouble. Still we had to do it so we wouldn't get found out. "Guys, time to drop this, we got a customer."

Everyone of us just nodded to the others as a dark skinned man walked through the doors of the shop, was in a very nice looking suit with navy blue colors. I took a deep breath. "Hi and welcome to Citadel Chapters, is there a specific book you are looking for?"

"I'm looking for someone." The man raised his hand turning down my services, I gulped a bit, I knew who this man was, of course not many people didn't. This was Captain Anderson, of the United Systems Alliance. I was worried about this, was he here to arrest me. "I need the services of a runner."

That surprised the hell out of me. "Well, there isn't a runner here. Let's say that there was one, what would you say that you needed the runner to run?"

"Nothing that would get the person in trouble." Anderson pulled out a datapad and handed it to me. "This is a service record for an Alliance Commander, Commander Shepard."

Reh came up front from the behind the desk. "I've heard of her, she was the hero Skyllain Blizts."

"Yes," Anderson looked at me. "And I know that you are the DeRezzed Runner. I contacted a Shadow Broker agent and they gave me your name."

"That damned Volus!" I had to stop myself from grinding my teeth. I knew the agent he was talking about. Still, this was a job, and I didn't want to try and pass it up if it wasn't actually illegal. "Okay, so why I am running this?"

"That is classified," The Alliance Captain raised his hand. "But I can tell you that you need to run this the Council."

"Interesting…" Shiva leaned on the counter thinking about the job. "Couldn't you have just given this to Ambassador Udina?"

"There is a new anti-human group that appeared on the Citadel recently and they want to stop this information from getting to the Council."

"Well than," I rubbed my chin thinking about it. "What is the size of the anti-human group?"

"Small at the moment," Anderson put his hands behind his back. "A few people of varying races."

"Okay," I lowered the datapad, it need a login to read most of the record, so most of it was blacked out for me. Though, I was impressed with this Shepard, a feat not many humans had accomplished with me. She was an N7 Solider, years of training, spacer kid, her mom was still in the service. Finally, she was the hero of the Skyallian Blitz. "I'll do it, but now what about the payment method?"

"We are prepared to give you as many credits as you want."

"I don't want creds." Shook my head at the Captain. "There are two things that I want you to promise me that I will get."

"What are they?"

"Help with another job in a few days, and I want to be pardoned for any charges held against me, if you want proff to my deserving it, send an operative to be sure I'm trustworthy."

Anderson thought about it for a long while, finally he held out his hand and spoke. "You have a deal."

"Good." We shook hands on it and that was how this adventure started. Boy did it start here at the very earliest.

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><p>"So," Shiva spoke in my ear through the comm that was in my ear. I stood atop a near by building. I had a clear view of where I needed to head from here. "To get to the Counselor, she is currently in the Embassies, so you need to get to-"<p>

"C-Sec, or the market entrance." I zipped up my jacket with the datapad strapped in it. Anderson had mentioned before he left that the reason that they didn't just send over the extranet was they were worried the data would have been intercepted and never reach the Council. "Shouldn't take me too long if I go through the markets."

"Rez," Shiva sighed heavily over the comm. "Be careful, the captain sounded like those guys meant business."

"Hey, when I am I not careful?"

"Do you want me to answer chronologically or alphabetically?"

"Ha ha, very funny." With that, I started to make my run. I ran to the edge of the roof and jumped down to a balcony and quickly jumped off to a low ledge that I climbed back onto and run across a small part of the building that was sticking out. I found a place to grab ahold of and started attempting to climb to the top of this current building, luckily, even though most buildings were designed to be smooth, but more often than not, there was just enough of a spot for me to grab. Finally, I reached I specific height, and looked to my left, there was a smaller building than the one I was climbing with a slight angle, which was enough for me to jump to and and slide down until I saw another area to climb.

I couldn't see much of a chance to get onto another building, but there was a flat slope near the middle length of the building, so I jumped for it. I had to roll to a stop, just before I fell off. Below me was an alleyway that pretty much led to where I wanted to go. So I hopped off of a buildings and walls until my feet touched the ground. I started to lightly jog for a while, that is, until I noticed someone standing near an entrance way to the alley from the street.

When I got closer, I could tell that it was a Turian, I almost thought, nothing of it, that was, until I noticed that an Asari and Salarian came out from the same entrance with guns drawn. I slowed to a jog, and looked behind me to see another Turian and Salarian. I had a good idea about what was going on. I came to a stop in front of the first guy. "Can I help you fine people this day?"

"Yeah," The Turian moved so he could get with in grabbing distance of me. "I think you can."

"Well, let me know," I noticed that the other two blocked off my entrance. Now I knew for sure what was going on. "I'll get to you later, as I am already on a job, I will get back to it later."

I tried to get out of the circle of people, but the Turian, who I was guessing was the boss, put his hand out and stopped me from continuing my movement. This was going to get ugly. "Sorry, but you have something that we want, now if you could just hand it over to use, we will make your death quick."

"Yeah, that's a tempting offer, but I prefer not to die at all, if that's fine with you." I got my feet into a fighting stance. Though I kept my hands just at my sides. "Plus, I'm guessing your spy you sent to watch over Anderson let know where I was moving. Though I have to admit I didn't think you'd actually make a move. You're the anti-human group."

"You catch on quick for a human." The Salarian in front of me responded snarkily. "That won't help you here though, you are now outnumbered and outgunned!"

"Ha!" I had to stop myself from laughing, I slowly reached under my jacket and pulled something. "The fact that you think that anything you do will actually kill me is funny! I'm the DeRezzed Runner!"

"Doesn't matter, your life ends here!" The Asari growled at me. At that moment I grabbed an object from my bag and dropped it to the floor. "GRENADE!"

All the aliens scattered, but as they did, smoke started to raise from the grenade I dropped onto the floor. "This is where the fun begins isn't it?"

I smirked as the Turian turned and pointed his gun at me. I ran forward and elbowed him in the stomach causing him to double over in pain. To which I grabbed his head and slammed it down into my knee, sending the alien to the ground, completely knocked out.

"Anyone else?" All of the aliens surrounded me again. "I'll take that as a yes."

I quickly targeted the Asari before she could land any biotics, I grabbed her arm outstretched with the gun in her hand. I twisted it so that her elbow was pointed towards the ground. "What the-"

Before she finished that sentence, I moved my back leg to replace my front one as it shot upwards and my armored boot slammed her bones into an angle that they were not supposed to go. The Asari started to scream out in pain, I stopped her by kicking her legs out from under her, sending the monogendered creature straight to the ground, her head bounced off the ground, rendering her unconscious. I turned to the first Salarian and went to make my move, when one of the other two aliens fired their pistol at me, so I dropped to my knees and slide up to the Salarian, when I jumped to my feet, I tackled the amphibious creature, slamming him into the wall behind him, and that's when I slammed his head into the structure just hard enough to drop him. I turned to the last two, only to just barely miss a fist by dropping to my back, I pushed myself up into the air using my arms and smashing into the Turian's face with my feet first, I rolled past and continued to run, I didn't want to keep up the fight unless more showed up, and besides, I wasn't too far from my goal.

Thank the gods for that. I ran straight to the first elevator to the Presidium and hit the button, just as the last two members of the anti-human group rounded the corner. I dropped to my ass as the elevator moved up, there was no way they would follow me to the embassies with guns, they would be shot. I grinned just as a voice appeared in the comm. "I can add this onto the number of times that you aren't careful."

"Screw you shiva!"

"Nope, I'm good, have fun meeting the Councilor for me."

"I'll try."


End file.
